Clearing
by Ahshe'sgone
Summary: Scotland is wet and cold and rough. Maka is rational and headstrong and Soul is obligatorily disinterested and idle, but do these still apply when they've crossed the Atlantic?
1. Chapter 1

So this sort of happened a few days ago. I decided to upload it to maybe get your opinions? It might turn out to be big. That's what it feels like. It started out as a prompt from Puru (darkpurply), but I deviated completely.

Please tell me what you think!

I do not own Soul Eater, nor any of the characters. Despite of what my brain may think.

_{Rated M for possible future content}_

* * *

It has been raining all day. The hotel room is unfamiliar and suffocating. The view out the window is dull. Soul is sprawled on top of one bed, staring at the ceiling as if he's watching a thrilling movie with an intricate plotline. And she's driving herself crazy.

She could occupy her mind with some light reading, but she's too stubborn. She needs to torture herself and stand there and glare at the rain. Count the hours and the minutes and the seconds it will take until Shinigami-sama or Stein-hakase or _someone _contacts them about the reason they're in cold, wet northern Scotland, of all places, blind-guessing at their objective.

Well, Soul couldn't care less. He seems content enough to her, whiling away the hours in a day-off-at-long-last mood. He's satisfied with the motorcycle rental, even though he doesn't think that they'll have a chance to use it, and he doesn't mind the humidity and the rain. He suggests they "take the train and go explore a forest or somethin'", but she can't force a single affirmative word out of her mouth.

She smells a rat. This is not how missions work. You're supposed to locate where in the world the outlaw soul-eater presently is, get there, track it down, beat it to a helpless pulp and head back home. All this waiting is not what usually happens at all and she can't get it out of her head that Shibusen is hiding something from them again and they want to keep her and Soul away from Death City. Images of "BLACK BLOOD" written in cheap blinking neon lights swirl and boom in her head and she's worried that they'll go back to find the whole city in shambles or just plainly gone.

"Hey," he calls from somewhere behind her. "Stop it."

She peels her eyes off the glass, because she wasn't even looking at the rain anymore, and lets her head drop. She looks at her finger rapidly and loudly tapping on the windowsill and orders it to stop misbehaving. Sends him an apologetic look through the still, dusty air of the old hotel room.

"No, I meant- I meant, stop worrying, Maka," he sighs and sits up.

"Oh." He looks tired and not quite as content as she thought him to be. "Um. Okay."

He pats the mattress so she shuffles over and flops on the bed. "I'm just worried that, you know. I mean. What are we doing here?"

"We're waiting? They'll have us hurrying all over the place soon, count your blessings," he says and runs fingers through his too long hair, pushing it out of his face.

She just looks at the ceiling, trying to find the same fascination in the activity as he does. It mostly frowns at her and maybe orders her out of the room. She's not welcomed by Scottish Ceiling. She doesn't feel welcome by Scottish Anything, really. Soul seems to.

She thinks she wants a shower. She hopes the water's warm. But that would make her sleepy and they need to stay up until it's actually night-time, because they'll need to take on a full day's work tomorrow. She hopes they will, at least.

He has his back to her and he's taken her place in looking out the window. She wants to nudge him from behind and maybe rewind a bit to when he asked if she wanted to go hunt imaginary Scottish fairies. She wants to snake a hand in his shirt and see if she can warm her hand up. He looks warm.

"Hey?" she calls.

"Hm?"

"Let's go on that walk?"

* * *

Soul decides walking won't take them anywhere he wants to be, especially in this rain. They run to the train station and Maka hopes they have the right tickets for the train they're boarding.

The ride is long and the train is pretty much empty. He's semi-excited about all the green outside and he prods her for equal parts of excitement from her every time he spots an animal near the tracks. She grins at the white-haired child sitting next to her and pushes him back in his seat so that she can see out the window as well.

He doesn't even complain about it.

* * *

The lightning flashes like sunlight in this shade-drenched place, and the rumble of thunder is sounding closer by the minute. She's just grateful that her pigtails will get wet and not fly loose in the wind, obscuring her vision and testing the sensitivity of her rage-switches.

Their umbrellas are already useless, bent and twisted inside out from the violence of the wind. She questions her brain about the reasons that let her voluntarily follow him here, but the only thing she has to say for herself is, hey, it's not the middle of winter, they'll survive.

He's laughing at the weather (or _with_ the weather, she really does wonder whether he has any supernatural powers other than shape-shifting, sometimes) and she wants to keep her seriousness and grave mood going strong, but the unusually large drops of water hitting her feels purifying and relaxing. She thinks she should be scolding him for being out in the rain. She's glad that this is cancelled out by the fact that she'd also have to scold herself.

She's keeping her gloves on though, for better or for worse. They may not have an official objective yet, but this is still in the wider territory where their mission is supposed to be carried out.  
He seems to be prepared and aware of his surroundings too. He's walking ahead, scouting, looking intently at the shadows tall trees cast and sniffing the air.

"Soul?" She hates how surprised her voice sounds. "Are you looking for elves?"

He ignores her and strides ahead. She sighs and follows. Calls his name again. He ignores her.

They reach a meadow. There's a small shallow not-really-lake that looks especially ominous under this periodic, naturally electric light. He turns to her and smiles his familiar shark-teeth grin and it turns demonic in the rapid changes of light she is not used to.

"What?" she asks, hugging herself to keep her coat from obeying every single command howled by the wind. The multitude of trees and narrow openings to slip through make its whistling eerie and she may or may not have started believing in half-broken memories of stories about wood elves and sprites read to her while she was still a child and typically half-asleep.

"This!" He excitedly points to the lake. "_This_ is a 'loch'!"

She wants to mock his childishness and she wants to tell him that a 'loch' must, by default, be bigger than this. This here, amazed little boy, is mostly a deep, wide puddle, strictly speaking; a sign that the earth adjusts to the stratosphere's directions 'round here, you know?

She smiles instead. He scoffs and she joins him in the meadow, because it's not very wise to stand under a bunch of trees while lightning makes evening closely resemble a sunny day.

He says something but the wind is blowing away from her and she can't hear him. She moves closer and motions 'what?' to him.

"Do you have a hair-band?" he shouts in her ear and the rain starts letting up.

She laughs and pulls one off her wrist. "You need a haircut," she tells him and he makes a point of taking his time picking up each of his white strands of hair and tucking it into a weird samurai-looking do.

His implied attentions are lost on her, though, because she's spotted something that doesn't belong in this scenery. In this world.

She's not entirely sure whether the light caught onto something and transfigured it completely (but there is no sun), or if her eyesight has finally abandoned her, after lots and lots of squinting at printed letters in the dark (but she has obligatory monthly physical examinations- nine days ago her eyes worked perfectly fine).

"Did you see that?" she asks him and takes a few steps toward the thicker end of the woods.

"What?" His voice takes a plunge for the usual low and bored, now that shouting over extreme weather phenomena is no longer necessary. "Maka?"

It's her turn, now, to ignore him. She runs to where she thought she saw it.

This tree is old, the bark is sturdy and compact. She looks up and sees its leaves dancing to a wind different from the one destroying her hair. She places a palm on the trunk and as Soul's hands grab her shoulders, she mentally chops herself. What did she think this was? Is _she_ the one going insane now?

"Think we should head back," Soul asks but doesn't bother making it sound like a question.

She decisively nods and decides the shower she thought she wanted might be what she needs. A cold shower. Cold water on her head. Not rain. Not this rain.

"You cold?" he asks, kicking a twig on the ground.

"No," she says and feels a chill down her spine.

"But you're shivering," he says, noncommittal and always more intrigued by the twig.

"I'm fine."

* * *

A/N: Gimme all your precious thoughts. Please. I'm being polite and all.

As always, and on a more serious note, thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Sorry for the long gap between updates. I was also trying to figure out where to go with this. I really hope you like it! Here~

* * *

He can't imagine anyone taking longer to walk around a town. She's stopping every two minutes to carefully examine each damned moss-covered rock on the ground, each closed shop by the side of the road and she won't turn back to look at him, not even once, not even when he's doing his very best to get her to pay attention to him, just for one second. He's ruining the image of stoic he's been building up all these years of puberty and occasional drunkenness and maybe exasperation at whose boobs his face wakes up into. But, she prefers to keep her eyes wide open, taking in everything new and she won't bat an eyelash at his horrendous shuffling, which she usually feels the need to point out and forbid.

She's prancing around as if she wasn't ever worried in her whole life. That semi-permanent unidentifiable gas above the top of her head that usually forms letters that read 'ultra-violent', or 'back the fuck off, boy', or 'hot-headed', or 'daddy issues' has vanished into the humid air of Edinburgh and given its place to maybe her brain, which is much more likely floating above her skull than inside of it.

But, wait, no. Ah, behold the first hidden, old, hole of a bookstore in the corner of two streets he forgets the name of, two seconds after having checked what they're called. Her brain goes back to its place and he can almost hear the gears in her head turning in the speed of the plane that brought them here. Will they have books that she hasn't seen before? And, oh, do the pages of an old European book smell differently from all the dusty tomes in the Shibusen library? Will cracking the spine of an unopened hardback sound new to her?

Her pigtails would defy gravity and dance around, were the air a bit drier.

She turns her head around and looks at him. She's not asking for his opinion, she's just making sure that he is being adequately obedient and following her without second thought. He shoves his hands into his jeans' pockets, finding this quite insufficient in terms of drowning his need to ask her why the hell she changes moods every time she blinks, and trails behind her inside the shop. They both have to bend a little to enter through the arch of the door.

"Hello!" Maka says to the old man behind a, uh, desk, he guesses. The stacks of books on the surface nearly hide the hunched figure and he stands up to greet them.

"Good day, lass! What can I help you with?" the old man gingerly asks.

"Do you happen to have any books on Scottish folklore?" she asks, smiling.

The old man looks in their general direction for a few moments, then triumphantly raises a finger into the air and disappears through a half-opened door to another room in the back.

Soul eyes Maka and he swears she's fidgeting. "Scottish folklore?" he asks.

"We're here now, so it's a chance to learn something I'd never happened to think about before," she says to her boots, which are looking especially shiny.

He'd pass this off as regular Maka being the regular Maka but she isn't. Not really. But she still _is_ Maka, usual or not, and she's not gonna share what's on her labyrinthine mind unless she feels like it. She only does things when she wants to. She's more of a cat than Blair, in that way.

He wanders towards the darker end of the room. The bookcases are crammed with old leather-bound books. He supposes he's found the antique section. Most of them are poems or maps in single copies.

This guy has a huge selection of really old and rare-looking books. And he's talking to Maka. This might take long and Soul might prefer the outdoors this time.

* * *

Maka accompanies her meal with one of the heavy books she just bought. Her arm is sprawled on the table, she's holding the book the furthest from the food she can. And she's reading it.

He's eyeing her and then he's not because she's not reciprocating at all. He looks to a table where three girls are seated and eyeing him. He raises a brow and expects Maka to grit teeth at them and sigh exasperatedly at him, but her book's all that's happening right now.

* * *

They walk home after the definitely-not-lunch-but-not-dinner-either. He thinks the only reason she isn't reading is because her boots are not magical and she has to watch her step to not slip and fall on her face.

It's not raining, but the roads still are wet and he can't get it out of his mind how impossibly good a ride on his newly acquired bike rental sounds. He gets a pass for today's mothering from Maka. She isn't gonna worry about the humidity and raised accident probability. He has a feeling she's gonna be preoccupied and he's doing his best to keep the sarcasm at a minimum.

When they're at the hotel, Tsubaki calls. Maka is enthusiastic and slightly interrogatory on the phone. He takes his shoes off and rubs his feet, realising that he's not used to walking this much. He hears her telling Tsubaki to shut Black*Star up for a minute, because there very literally is an ocean between them and she can't hear her very clearly. She doesn't raise her own voice, though, and he likes that.

She peeks into the bathroom to tell him everything sounds fine in Death City and that Tsubaki says that nothing shady is going on. He says 'okay' but he doubts she can hear him over the shower. She leaves, but he still checks for her before getting out and grabbing the towel.

She unceremoniously watches him as he rummages his suitcase for a shirt. He looks up at her crossed legs.

"Going out?" she asks.

"Thinking of going for a drive."

She looks at the page she's on, places a palm over it and uses her other hand to brush her hair back. "I'm staying," she says, with a slight questionmark at the end.

"You want to read, don't you?" He raises the collar of his leather jacket and zips it all the way up.

"Wear your helmet, road's slippery."

"You wanna come keep an eye on me?"

"Soul-"

"Yeah, okay, be back soon."

* * *

He knows she needs to read all the material on her newest obsession before she can communicate with Earth again. He kinda wanted her to come, though. It's such a clear night. It's a shame. They won't get any like this one again here.

The road _is_ wet and he needs to try hard to keep the bike from skidding. He's not wearing his helmet, but the humidity has nothing on him. The bike is unfamiliar and that's making him more careful than usual.

His brother liked to tell him he's too stubborn and he stubbornly ignored him. He can think of a few people who'd like to say 'they told him so', were something to happen now, here, without a helmet on his head and his hand throttling his way into muddy paths. He feels luck is on his side and the air feels new and alien in his face and that's a good thing because he's not exactly into routine Nevada aerified sand.

He almost knows Maka's made herself tea and is entirely content reading her myths and legends, so he's wondering why he even bothers to wonder about what she's up to.

* * *

She's sleeping with the window open when he comes back, curled up on the bed and with her knees nearly touching her chin. He touches her shoulder to get to wake up a little, so that he can manoeuver her under the covers. She groans as he straightens her legs and lifts them to pull the blanket from under them.

He's tucking her in, for fuck's sake, and then he's standing there looking at her just because she can't get all defensive and questioning now. She's sleeping and her tank top is too loose and it's her own fault, so he can stare all he wants.

He's brought back an acorn that's so unripe, it's green. Leaves it next to her in the bed. He kind of may want her to wake up in the middle of the night and think 'what the hell?'. He's glad she's left her book on the floor near the bed and is not sleeping while hugging it.

He takes off his shirt and pants and sits on his bed. Why are they in the same room? He's not gonna worry about the finances of Shibusen. He _is_ gonna worry about her nonchalant reaction when finding out they were to be sharing a room.

He wills himself to fall asleep. He's used to thoughts like this, it's not the first time he's heard her breathe in her sleep and it's not the last, probably. He'll fall asleep, wake up, learn what this mission is, get done with it and everyone will be happy.

In his dream, the window is huge and open. Maka is trying to close it but, uh, she isn't really. The generic desk of the room turns red and gradually to Oni. He forces himself to wake up. Realises he hasn't been breathing and his breath hitches in his throat.

He looks to his left and the bed is empty. He waits a few moments and tries to listen for Maka in the bathroom. She's not here.

He gets up and walks to the window. It's closed. It's the window he remembers. He opens it and checks outside for the bike. It's there. Well. Yeah. She can't drive it anyway, can she, genius?

Her books are stacked on the desk and the table lamp is on. He sighs and puts his clothes on. She's not stupid and she can take care of herself, but it's late and she has trouble understanding this damn Scottish accent people 'round here have. He doesn't need to look for her to find her. He knows he will.

He takes two of his jackets with him. One of them he slips into and the other one he holds on to. The engine of the bike is loud in the silence of the wee hours of the morning and he finds the low rumble reassuring. The air has seen no sun for quite a few hours, so it feels like pins in his face.

* * *

He drives along the train tracks, towards the forest with the little lake. He spots her easily. Light is reflecting off of her. He doesn't know what the source of the light is and he doesn't really want to think about it because he's stopped next to her and she's shivering and is her hair longer? Or is it just pin straight wet? But it's not raining.

He blankets his second warmer jacket over her shoulders and she thankfully shrugs into it and smiles up at him.

"Thanks," she says, noncommittally- she was expecting him.

"Yeah," he replies and holds his 'what in the fuck are you doing' back.

Her eyes are slightly teary. Maybe it's from the cold. He's compelled, really, to kiss them and let her fit into a hug he hadn't realised he was offering.

"What were you doing?" he asks the air over her shoulder.

"Cross-checking."

"What?"

"Folklore," she replies, voice muffled.

"Checking for elves and sprites?"

"Mhmm."

"And?"

"Found 'em."

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading, as always! Please tell me what you thought. Your words are always desired and welcome!


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Sorry this took so long. Real life is time-consuming, sadly. I wish I had more time, and I wish I had more time when my brain actually functioned properly.

I hope you like this, late as it is.

* * *

She asks him to take the long route home and he would tell her that 'it's the middle of the night and aren't you sleepy?', and that there really _isn't _a long route home from where they are to what he assumes she refers to as 'home' for now, but she says 'please' and puts her arms around his waist on the bike, before he even starts the engine. She never does that. Weirdo.

He isn't even gonna ask her about what she was doing out walking in the dark. She was sleep-walking, probably, apparently, _he hopes so_, and she's probably high off of the old Scottish dust in her newly acquired ancient tomes.

Her fingers press into his stomach as he tries to find more winding and time-consuming alternatives to the long cement road that leads into town. She's digging into him in a way that completely eliminates the layers of clothing he's wearing, except he's also sure that he saw her clipping her fingernails this morning.

He turns his head slightly to his right and shouts, "Maka?"

She squeezes onto him and breathes a question mark into his ear.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, thanks for your jacket."

She can play dumb for now. He won't hold this conversation while he's driving.

* * *

She wakes up to the unfamiliar scent of, is that hazelnut? Where is she? Oh. Hotel room. Which Soul and she are sharing. Scotland. No mission. Re-evaluating her take on the world.

She sits up and regrets it as soon as the covers slide off her. She pulls the blankets up and around her and glares at the open window near her bed.

She must have taken her jacket off at some point while she was asleep. She fishes for it around the floor by her bed and puts it on. Shuffles to the window and shuts it. Spies one steaming paper cup of coffee on the desk, but no complimentary cup and no white-haired slouching boy drinking it.

She takes a whiff of the steam coming out of the cup and it's sweet and it occurs to her that she really did want a very sweet cup of coffee this morning. She puts a sleeved palm around it and sits on the chair. Come home, Soul. Come home in five. Four. Three. Two. One.

She closes her eyes to listen for the rental bike. She can't.

She wants to tell him everything, everything about everything that she saw and that there was. She doesn't know where to start and she doesn't know where she would normally, logically start.

He walks into the room when she's halfway done with her coffee. He carries plastic bags from the grocery store. He leaves them on the table in front of her and he glances at her and her clothing and sits on her bed.

"Thanks for the coffee," she says.

"Yeah, I woke up early."

She almost sniffs a slight accusatory hint in his tone, but shrugs it off as her own over-consciousness clouding her judgement when it comes to her entirely uncomplicated partner, whose motives are always, always clear to her, of whose thoughts she can always guess and decipher, who is more or less an open book to her. You know, a pictured book, the ones three-year-olds understand.

She's amazed, though, that she can still muster up this much sarcasm in her head, even though she clearly fails at identifying anything else that's bouncing around in it, causing headaches that can only be cured by sleeping. And amnesia, preferably.

She feels the need to repeat her waking up this morning. Waking up way earlier this morning and taking off. Repeat all of it, take Soul with her. Walk with him and let him be the calming, balancing factor in the whole situation, for once. She may have the anti-demon wavelength. _He_ has the ultra-calming, extra-familiar wavelength that can power the chemicals in her body to dictate to her brain that nothing is wrong. Everything will be fine. Everything is possible and she can win.

She feels the need to repeat what she just said. Thank him, so much, for the coffee. It was so good of him to go out and buy her an extremely sweet morning coffee, which she did want, needed, as a matter of fact. Tell him she's sorry he had to go out before morning became light and fetch her from her ventures like she was a straying child. Thank him for that too.

Or at least, brainwash him telepathically to initiate some form of interrogation on his own. Ask her what the hell she is doing, was doing, where and why. Direct her into telling him what she wants to tell him and what he wants to hear from all this.

"Sorry you had to, um." She runs out of words and he loses interest in looking at the winding shapes on the wood floor.

"'s okay. I was awake, anyway. And dressed." He looks at her through too-long strands of hair and his mouth curves towards 'fucking annoyed'.

"I know. Sorry. I. I was... I wasn't intending to, um, make my absence noted? I was walking back to the hotel when you, ehm, found me?"

She needs to make at least a large percentage of what comes out of her mouth and patchily flies his way not have a question mark.

She supposes he has an eyebrow raised. She can only make out a generic 'go on' mood from him.

She rolls around words and sounds on her tongue, checks how they feel, how they'd ring, rejects, rejects, rejects.

"I found... stuff? From the folklore I was reading? Elves, uh, more like fairies? No. Spirits, you know-"

He cuts her off. "I _really _don't."

"They are more like-"

Again. "Maka." He checks he has her attention and silence and uses the time slot to tie his hair back. "Maka, you can't- you have to-" Stands up and steps over. "Are you okay?"

She looks down from her stomach to her feet. Then at his feet, then up to his face. "Yeah. I'm. I'm fine. I'm just-" She stops, because he's reaching for her head and she thinks he's gonna, rightfully, smack her. Her coherent thoughts aren't in agreement with impulse though, and she inches towards his hand, rather than away.

"Leaf," he says and pulls out said leaf from her hair.

She nods in gratitude. "-confused."

"Hah, well, so am I."

"I read my books." He nods. "Um. They are really _specific._ But, you kn-, sorry, there's so many of them. They are so many, and..."

"So many books?"

"No, no, so many of the creatures the books talk about."

He gives up trying to balance himself on his heels in front of her, so he just goes back to the bed and she lets her head fall. She needs to get her brain to work.

"Soul. I don't know why I can suddenly _find_ them." Sighs. "Okay. I have thought about it. It's like a different place, that forest we went to, the lake- the loch, remember?"

His brows scrunch together at the sound of his name and he looks at her in disbelief. "You sound crazy," he says.

"I'm not."

"Yeah, I know. You probably aren't."

She's wearing a tank top and a loose jacket. And pajama pants. And no bra. She feels rather exposed. She feels she could use her long black coat. She needs some sort of protection, safety, because she needs to explain things she doesn't understand herself to the one who usually provides a feeling of protection and safety.

Nevertheless, she guesses just about now is her turn to go sit next to him and use their physical proximity to magically help in making him understand.

"You need to come see this," she says, arranging herself next to him.

"You need to promise to not be crazy," he says, turning to face her.

"I will. I promise, I'm not crazy."

"No. I mean, crazy irresponsible. I mean, promise I don't have to wake up without you in the room, without knowing where the hell you are while being in a foreign _continent._"

She tries for a smile but it comes out sheepish and wrong. She can only stare at him stare at her. She might need and/or want to hug him, but he doesn't look like he'd rejoice in her doing so.

He rolls his eyes and stands up. Kicks her on the shin lightly and she says 'ow' just to let him know that, yes, she won't do it again. She promises.

* * *

He's following her into the forest again. His hands are shoved so deep in his pockets that they may rip. The sky is overcast and he hopes it doesn't rain. Then again, he might want it to, since it will add nicely to his list of "Reasons Why Coming Here Was an Awful Idea, Maka".

She's striding ahead and he's again irrelevant as she sniffs the air and caresses trees as she passes them by. He imagines splinters going into her fingers and her not even registering that wood is stabbing her.

She comes to a halt and cranes her head. He stops a few feet behind her. She turns back to see he's there and puts a shushing finger on her lips.

Still looking at him, she lets her hair down and puts the hair bands around her wrist. Takes her boots and socks off and leaves them on the ground.

He wants to show her that what she's doing is weird and maybe suggest she take off more of her clothes in the same way. He wants her to say they can resonate, so that he can go inside her soul and see what's in there. He feels out-of-touch and it's making the ground beneath his feet wobbly.

From the look she's giving him, he gathers that he should abide by the invisible rules she's obeying and walk barefoot, so he does, but not without grunting in displeasure, just to not stray from his usual set reactions.

* * *

A/N: I'm probably being a tease. Excuse me.

Any thoughts are always, always welcome, and they are one of my favourite things to wake up to.

Till next time, which I really will try to make soon, good luck and have a good day!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: This has taken so long, that I think apologizing would be cocky.

Thank you so much for your reviews and opinions and any kind of feedback on my wordvomit, for that matter. It makes me happy.

I hope that everything is okay and that you can try and enjoy this!

* * *

Soul remembers Maka telling him about her obsession to not forget anything that was on her mind on each and every particular period of her long childhood. She'd say that at the time, those thoughts were all she had and she truly believed in them. Just thinking that one day she'd go against her then ideology, not even realising it, frightened her.

She said to always believe her when she told him something, when she told him things that may seem strange or even impossible to him. She made him promise, because she herself promised that whatever came out of her mouth when addressing him was clear, pure truth. Processed and judged to be true by her, so if he was gonna resonate with her, he'd have to trust her words and believe them to be truthful.

In resonance, he's seen everything safely calculated, proof-read, proof-thought. Everything in its right place. Stable and certain.

So, he believes her. He backs off whenever she tells him to, he transforms at the first syllable of his name and he'd habitually believe her if she said that the world was a lie and that she was an illusion.

So now he's trailing behind her, stopping when she stops, walking when she walks. She seems familiar with everything and she sounds to be measuring distances. Counting her strides and the trees they pass.

His bare feet are annoyingly defenceless against the damp branches and leaves and dirt he's stepping onto. He's come far enough into the forest now and going back to get his shoes would be counterproductive.

She finally stops and looks up at the patches of cloudy sky that show through the thicker high branches. He sighs and leans against a tree that's so conveniently tilted and he's busy feeling grateful for the unexpected comfort, when something wraps around his ankle. Suddenly he's shifting his arm into a blade to stab into the trunk and avoid falling on his butt. The tree is evidently harder than steel, though, so it's the ground he meets.

"What are you doing?" Maka asks and her voice cracks in a chuckle.

She extends her arm at him and he takes it.

"It felt like something-" he gets up, "-grabbed my leg."

She looks at the ground around him and gives him a calculating look. "Try not to shift, okay?"

"Can't."

"Don't, though. Please?"

'You're being too careless' is on the tip of his tongue when a gust of earth scented wind seems to lift every fallen leaf and make it whirl and dance around the old trees. He closes his eyes to protect them from being destroyed. When he opens them, he can make out Maka's figure in front of him and his arms and neck are tingling. He squints to see what's happening, but the light that comes through is extremely inadequate now, he finds.

* * *

"Stay still," she says and her voice sounds far.

He's getting goosebumps and he feels the need to jerk and twist and get those damn mosquitoes off him. Is she trying to resonate with him? Because he's sure he can feel something that is not his own in his head, but that's not what soul resonance feels like. This is not what Maka feels like. He opens his eyes wide and what he can see looks more like the inside of his eyelids than a forest and a girl, which is what he expects.

Echoes are asking him what he's made of and how he came to be. Why is he here, why is he white and red, why is he black and red, why _so_ black? What is this black, what does it mean? There is no green in him, there is no brown. He's all black and silver and red, and his fur is white, why? Is he a threat? He can't be, yet a threat flows through his veins, enlarging and minimising at will. Is it his own will that commands it?

And what is this, here? Furiously and hastily sealed, colours of another hue, colours earthly and warm, welcoming but obscure, decomposed and then reconstructed. Where is the key to these parts? How can they be affected?

Scratches, boy, they heal and they mend and sizzle their way under your skin. Scratches and cuts and bruises, what have you been doing? You've been taking red in, consuming red, consuming evil, do you expect to heal? Do you expect to come out clean? Do you expect no marks, everything to stay the same, untouched?

What is green and what are trees, do you know? What are you and why are you here? You repeat a name, you repeat your name, is it yours? Who is this you have with you, do you know?

Shush now and open up. Shut up now, and open up, and see what's it here and face what's in here and start using the correct words and names.

There is so little of you inside of you, there is so much of everything else. Control and barriers, borders, lines. They don't work , they will not work. You can't push us out, you can't even open your eyes.

Can you remember before or has it all been mixed into your cold talent?

He can't think of the answers. The commotion in his head leaves room for little else and he can only use it to try and get back to normality. He pushes to snap out of it, opens his mouth to call a name familiar, but he can't find the right ways to move his mouth and use the air in his lungs to produce sound.

He can smell scents of long ago, smells of old rooms and rusty fence gates, smells an of old people's house, of an unopened house. He can hear high pitched notes. Different values try to match each other, clunks and nails hitting old ivory try to match flowing melody.

Forgotten thoughts and heavy sinkers latch onto his chest and he blindly obeys his instincts of needed defence.

The tingling has stopped and his mind is empty. He sees feet in front of him, bare feet dirtied with soil and mud. He finds his fingers pressing onto his head and feels the familiar sting of a cut. He's more than relieved.

"What did you do?!" Maka shouts from above him and falls on her knees.

She looks at him with furrowed brows and he follows her gaze to his arm, which is bleeding on his ripped jacket.

"What was that?" he asks in an unintended whisper.

"How did you do this?" she asks.

"What _was _that?" he repeats.

"Stand still for a seco- hey! Don't- don't. Soul, stand still."

"Were you doing something? Because, in my head. I couldn't see and everything was being poked at, but it wasn't you."

"Can you deal with the bleeding? Because I can't find my- and why did we have to- ugh." She looks around and all confidence and calm has left her movements. "Can you?" she asks, holding up the bottom part of her shirt and pointing at his hand.

"It wasn't voices, because, how clichéd would that be? I suppose I get what you can't tell me, but, did this happen to you too?"

"Soul!" she commands.

"Oh." He shifts the finger she's holding up and she murmurs curses under her breath as she's cutting fabric off of her white shirt.

"If you'd only stayed still," she says, bandaging the cut. She sounds truly sad and not disappointed in him, so grumbled empty insults and defences are not uttered.

* * *

Soul seems to be having particularly vivid dreams, from what she gathers. He is tossing and turning, hiding under the covers more often than throwing them off him. She's glad he hasn't accidentally smacked her yet, considering how often she's had to go over to his bed and make soothing sounds or untangle his legs from the sheets when he pulls and pulls to get them over his head but gets nowhere.

Well, she doesn't exactly have to, but she's been having pangs of regret digging right through her thick skull and making her question the motives that led her to take him to 'meet her new friends', as he likes to phrase it.

He slept during the train-ride home and collapsed on the bed as soon as they got in the room. She hopes he wakes up soon, on his own accord. She hopes his sleep becomes a little more pleasant and she hopes the trouble and frustration that had settled on his brow and on his shoulders fade away and disappear. She hopes he says that they can resonate so that she can go inside of his soul and see what's in there.

She climbs in bed with him and she pushes him a little so that she can fit and not fall off. He stops moving for a second and she's worried that he's gonna throw her off the bed and name her an enemy. She hugs him and hopes he remembers who she is, amidst dreaming and waking, and he does. He wraps arms and legs around her and nestles his head between her arms.

"You ok?" she asks.

"Fucked up and scared of mind crawlers," he says and takes a deep breath.

She caresses too-long hair and after a while he's sound asleep.

She smiles at the effectiveness of her breasts and the feeling of safety they seem to provide and mentally notes to tell him that she isn't _any_ kind of mother figure, especially to him.

She stays awake and keeps watch for mind crawlers, bad dreams and stray demon thoughts.

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading! As always and of course, anything you want to say or do is very very welcome.


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